Europe

A trio of SSAs made the most of low yields in Danish kroner and Swedish kronor to print paper with coupons hovering around zero this week.

Schuldschein borrowers, with the help of arranging banks, are for the first time offering different pricing ranges on issues of fixed and floating rates, as the market tries to find ways of dealing with the prolonged period of negative interest rates.

The City of London Corporation, via its endowment fund The City’s Cash, has launched first US private placements (PP), roadshowing the prospective notes this week and next. The funds will be partly used to finance the consolidation of the Billingsgate, Smithfield and Spitalfields wholesale food markets at a new site in Dagenham, Essex.

Voltalia, the French renewable power producer, launched a €376m rights issue on Monday to finance an increase in capacity, and won a new investor — the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. This is believed to be the first time the EBRD has bought a public equity in western Europe.

The European Union (EU) began its funding for the year on Wednesday, later than other public sector borrowers. With a €250m syndication to finance disbursements to Tunisia and Jordan as it adapts to a smaller borrowing programme.

Gatwick, London's second airport, offered a £300m no-grow 30 year bond into a quieter corporate bond market on Thursday, while Engie, the French power and gas group, issued a €500m non-call 5.75 year hybrid. This slowing of issuance from the frenetic pace earlier in the week was welcomed by bankers concerned investors might have been overtaxed.

Agence Française de Développement (AFD)’s annual borrowing programme is expected to rise sharply in the coming years as a result of increased lending to developing countries.

Equity-linked bankers said this week that European Central Bank president Mario Draghi has ended their slim hopes of a meaningful revival in convertible bond issuance this year, after he said he could cut interest rates and resume buying bonds if eurozone growth fails to pick up.

TCS Group Holding, the Russian financial services company owned by founder Oleg Tinkoff, has completed a $300m primary capital raise by selling Global Depository Receipts (GDRs) on the London Stock Exchange, gathering a strong following from investors for the deal.

Can a bank ever really be certain about its interpretation of the perfect capital structure?

The £540m IPO of Airtel Africa, the African division of India’s Bharti Airtel, has been priced at 80p, the bottom of the initial range, following a $100m anchor order from an existing investor, according to a source close to the transaction.

UniCredit and Intesa Sanpaolo printed €3bn of new debt this week, almost doubling the amount sold by Italian banks this month. Around €6.5bn of bonds have been sold in June, making it the largest amount of Italian bank bonds sold in a single month since early 2014.